Weekly Reflection 2

This week was another challenging week of working aboard the Roseway. I learned a lot from working with all of the smart hard working crew on board. One of my favorite things I’ve found while working on the Roseway is how quick and smart everyone is at fixing things. For example, Captain Tom was using a planer to take up some of the paint off of the deck. Unfortunately, he caught the cord in the planer, and got it stuck, so he had to cut it. Not even five minutes after the cord was caught, Captain Tom already had it spliced and back in action.

Another time, I was working on sanding the bulwarks of the boat, and was using a combination of a five inch orbital sander, and a mini triangle sander. The triangle sander allowed me to get at the corners and edges a bit better. Unfortunately there were very few 60 grit pads for the triangle sander, so I told Captain that we needed more. Another crew member named Richie chimed in saying “You don’t need to get more pads, just cut the five inch orbital pads to fit the sander.” It seemed so obvious after he said it that I could just fashion my own pads out of the ones we already have. It’s this cleverness that often comes out of necessity that I’ve really come to admire in the people I’ve been working with.

This week I’m also still figuring out what it means to work hard. Last week I thought I couldn’t work any harder, but this week I’m working harder and oddly it’s becoming easier and more normal. For instance, after using the five inch orbital sander all day and sanding bulwarks and waterways I thought, “Hey, that wasn’t even that bad.” If it was the week before I probably wouldn’t have been able to work as hard or as efficiently, and it would’ve felt like a grueling day.